|
|||
:
|
56 EDWARD FITZGERALD [CHAP.
alone; and sometimes for days together only saw them
for a few minutes in the garden, where he would'saunter along a winding shrubbery walk, with his plaid about him3 wearing blue glasses, and a shade over his eyes, which were often painful. He would often be heard humming over to himself old songs in his weak, true voice. Sunday afternoons he would spend with Alfred Smith at Button Hoo, in an arbour, sipping a glass of wine and talking of the old days. He consulted a doctor about this time, who told him that his heart was affected. This was good news to FiteGerald, who manifested singular cheerfulness at the announcement, as holding out to him a prospect of the sudden death which he desired. In the same year Spedding finished his monumental edition of Bacon, the fourteenth volume appearing at that date (1874). " I always look upon old Spedding's as one of the most wasted lives I know," said FitzGerald cheerfully, adding that Spedding had only succeeded in establishing that view of Bacon's character which he set out to dissipate.
In the same year FitzGerald paid a pilgrimage to
Abbotsford, and found himself full of emotion; but he could now less and less bear to be away from home, and hurried back to Littlegrange after three days.
One of FitzG-erald's chief correspondents at this
time was Fanny Kemble, whom he sincerely loved, though he confessed he olid not care for her acting. She was a lively, witty, vivacious woman, with a tender heart; she wrote in 1875 some reminiscences of Fitz- Gerald and others, which appeared in the Atlantic Jf0»tf%, but they were couched in so eulogistic a style "fefra* FitzGerald felt bound to paste a piece of paper, in his own;copy, over the passage which concerned M»sei£ His letters to her, tender, fanciful, affec- • tmpjtiey are among the best he wrote. |
||
|
|||